We tried a few alternatives and nothing came close to Discourse in terms of encouraging healthy and constructive discussion despite a very passionate and diverse audience

As an open source project, we have promoted some amazing forum moderators from amongst our players, and they help the community learn to help itself when the core team can’t handle the onslaught. For a project with a wide mix of young kids and older players, it’s surprising how well it works.

...It also allows the community to provide support to each other in a healthy and positive environment (a rare thing on the Internet these days)

Discourse has given us the freedom to build a Community that caters precisely to our customers needs. Because the platform is so flexible, we’ve been able to launch custom initiatives, campaigns and content that has increased sign-ups by over 600% (compared to our previous community platform)